DIY skirt - made from a dress

This last week I have been on vacation and had a lot of fun with the family with trips to a water park and the beach, but I wanted to finish at least one project before I returned back to work. So around 8pm Sunday night I decided to start a long overdue sewing project.

Like the scar on my knee, for some reason on a recent hike I thought it was a good idea to crawl under a fallen tree that was covering the trail with my big hiking pack on my back instead of going around.  I was already halfway under the tree before I realized that this was probably not my best idea. It reminded me of the times when I was 8-9 months pregnant and thinking I could squeeze past people or through tight areas, and then get my belly wedged.

Anyway, I had a dress that I bought over a year ago at a Yard Sale for $1, but it was too small, but I loved the graphic print, so I thought I would try and up-cycle it into a new skirt, and I think it turned out pretty cute.

I used an existing pencil skirt made out of a jersey fabric as my template. I used one of the existing seams of the dress for my guide. In doing this I decided I would make the hem line asymmetrical, and use the existing hem-line of the dress (less sewing).  The waistband of the skirt is folded down as I will be making this in a separate step.

I made a yoga style waistband for the skirt, and again used the waist band of my existing skirt as a guide.  I folded the fabric so it is quadruple thick to account for front and back of waistband and for the double thickness needed for the waist band.  This waistband once completed is only about 4 inches wide, but if you do not have an existing skirt to use as a template check out the waist band instructions at sew mama sew it gives good instructions on how to determine measurements for a waistband.

Here is what my waistband looked like once I cut it out. I cut out the fabric using an existing seam for one side

Fold fabric in half, wrong sides together and sew the left seam. You will now have approx. an 8 inch wide circle. Fold wrong sides together to make circle double thickness - this is your waistband.

Slip waistband over the body of the skirt and pin the unfinished seams together (you will have 3 thicknesses of the fabric to sew together). Sew together using a stretch stitch.

This was a very quick and easy project and as I used existing seams of the old dress I only had to sew 3 seams ( 1 side of skirt, 1 side of waist band and then attach waist band to skirt). This project was finished well under an hour.

The length of the skirt can be adjustable by a couple of inches depending in if you want to fold over the waist band or not.

Guess what I wore back to work on Monday?

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Happy Feet

I have been trying to get back into running again with the goal of running a half marathon, and maybe eventually a marathon.

I remember running track back in high school, I started off competing in the 3000 m, but gradually reduced my distance, finding myself quite happy with the 400m. Once around the track was quite enough for me.



Back then I would never have considered a marathon.

So what has changed? A desire to challenge myself? Mid-life crisis maybe?

Anyway, I started running again, but my progress has been inhibited by significant toe pain when attempting to run anything further than 4-5 miles. (Side note: the distance I was running has become quite a joke between me and my husband. I was using my phone to track my runs, and thought I was running these awesome times and distances, but come to find out my GPS is quite inaccurate, so now when we talk distance he always questions was that 5 miles or 5 "jemma-miles", but the fact was that I was having a lot of pain.)

I have always had toe pain/cramps when playing sports for any extended periods of time, but usually able to make it through the game of B-ball, Soccer, etc. I tend to run high on the ball of my foot, which puts a lot of stress on my toes. After much research my self-diagnosis is Mortons Neuroma (don't you just love the internet!).

As you can see I have really funky ugly toes. To illustrate how bad they look I remember being at the ER as a teenager for a badly sprained ankle and was messing around in the wheelchair and the ice-pack on my ankle fell onto the floor. A passing doctor picked up the ice-pack for me and looked at my foot to determine where to place the pack and placed the pack on my toes instead of my ankle, that's how bad my toes look. No wonder they always hurt.

So I have been on the hunt for new running shoes that might alleviate some of my foot pain and came across the barefoot shoes by Merrell.

Merrell Shoes

They have a wide toe-box that allows my funky toes the room they need to spread out. Also the low profile promotes a natural "barefoot" running style, landing more on the mid-foot, taking pressure off my toes. I have been gradually acclimating to these new shoes, and this running style, and so far it is going well.

Today I completed 6 pain-free miles Yeah!!! (half-way to my half-marathon)

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